Imagine if you grew up surrounded by members of a religion that taught that the ultimate noble thing you could do would be to sacrifice your firstborn to a bear-headed god named Krangg. All your life, everyone you knew did this. (Their subsequent children were allowed to grow up.) It was often heart-breaking, but everyone around you really and truly believed that the future of the human race depended upon this happening, and so, as difficult as it was for new parents to murder their first child, they would do so, to the deep praise and adulation of friends and family. For they had performed a profound, noble sacrifice for the common good. So when the time came, and you had your first child, you did the “right” thing, as much as it pained you to do so, and valiantly and selflessly slaughtered your own child.
Then imagine that at some point, years later, you left that screwed up cult, and found out that it was all a lie. There is no “Krangg,” and the widespread murder of innocents served no good purpose at all. It was just mass murder, and nothing else. It didn’t make you noble and brave. It just made you an ignorant, duped murderer. Sure, you could say you didn’t know any better, but still, how devastating would it be to face what you had done, based on your past beliefs? In fact, how desperately would you want to cling to your past beliefs, just to not have to face the reality of what you had done?
Well, something just as bad as that hypothetical is a big part of mainstream American culture. But the false god isn’t named “Krangg.” The false god is named “national security,” or sometimes “fighting for freedom,” or sometimes “spreading democracy.” And it’s an absolute lie, start to finish, but many millions of well-intentioned, devout believers sacrifice their offspring to that false god, and their offspring commit all manner of terrorism and murder on the other side of the world in the name of that god, often losing their lives (or limbs, or sanity) in the process.
And, unfortunately, they are often just as unwilling to hear the truth as a “true believer” in “Krangg” would be. And this is understandable. If you had proudly encouraged your son to join the Marines, and then he died in some ditch on the other side of the world, you would have a very big incentive to cling to the belief that at least he died doing something great, heroic, brave and noble. Every ounce of you would desperately want to believe that he gave the “greatest sacrifice” for his country, or for freedom, or democracy, or … well, something other than the random whims of megalomaniacal politicians and the bottom lines of the huge corporations that own the ruling class.
And what could be more insensitive, rude and mean that someone (like me) coming along and telling you that your son died for nothing? Actually, for less than nothing. Not only did his “service” accomplish nothing worthwhile; it contributed to violence and evil, victimized and harmed innocents, and empowered and enriched sociopathic monsters. But even if that is the case, isn’t it nicer to just let the true-believers believe the lie, so they can feel better about things?
Actually, no. It’s not. If the war machine was dead and gone, and it made no difference what people believed about the past, I might not bring it up. But this is not the past. This is right now. Today, duped parents proudly continue to send their duped sons and daughters off to act as unwitting pawns, to murder or to be killed on the other side of the world. Is it doing them a service—or doing society a service—to let them believe that lie, and repeat that lie, and perpetuate and spread that lie, to the detriment of themselves and everyone else?
No, it isn’t. Sometimes the truth hurts. In fact, sometimes it hurts a lot. Some people zealously and emotional resist the truth, because it hurts too much to face. That is why, in response to articles and videos like the one below, a lot of people who have been indoctrinated into the “troop-worship” mentality will post comments that are emotional, irrational, even hateful to the point of being incoherent.
They will vehemently insist (often while wishing a horrible death on me for suggesting otherwise) that veterans are brave soldiers for freedom, that without their “service” we would all be dead, or enslaved, or oppressed. They will proclaim that those who criticize the military only have the freedom to do so because of the military “fighting for their freedoms.” That, of course, is a ridiculous lie, which is why they never get into details or substance. They just parrot the mythology they were taught—lies they swallowed, hook, line and sinker—and then emotionally insult and condemn anyone who doesn’t (and usually wish them harm in the process).
It’s bad enough to find out that you donated to some charity that was a fraud, or endorsed some candidate who was a liar, or believed in some “guru” who turned out to be a crook. People even resist admitting things like that. They don’t want to look gullible, or stupid. Now multiply that by a thousand, and you almost have what members of the military, and those who “support the troops,” are faced with. It’s one thing for someone to fall for some little trick or sales pitch. But to acknowledge that noble, brave, well-intentioned people went off to some other country and killed people, and/or got killed themselves, for a complete and utter lie, is too much for a lot of people to face.
No, the veterans who died in combat do not deserve our thanks. They have done exactly nothing to protect or defend the lives or the freedoms of Americans. Nothing.
They do, however, deserve our pity, because they threw away their lives in a pointless war game that benefitted only tyrants. They may have thought they were doing something brave, noble and heroic—at least to begin with. But in the end, they died for less than nothing. Neither pointing that out, nor vehemently denying it, will bring them back, or will undo whatever pain or death they inflicted on others. However, pointing it out loudly and often might stop future would-be mercenaries from “bravely” volunteering to be thrown into the meat grinder.
If any “We support the troops!” types have read this far, I might as well end on the most depressing, devastating truth of the matter—the one they really don’t want to hear, but should anyway.
The media and the military try hard to drastically under-report the sky-high suicide rate among members of the military (active and otherwise). In several combat zones and military conflicts, U.S. soldiers have killed themselves (intentionally) more often than they have been killed in combat. Think about that carefully: if you proudly wave goodbye to your son as he ships off for some military deployment somewhere, you should probably worry more about him killing himself than you should worry about him being killed by “the enemy.”
“More veterans succumbed to suicide than were killed in Iraq.”
And here is the part that pro-military people really don’t want to hear, or don’t want to think about: many of those suicides are not because those soldiers saw horrible things, but because they did horrible things. They realized, far too late, that being obedient order-followers, and acting as loyal hitmen for Uncle Sam, doesn’t make them righteous defenders of freedom. It makes them thugs, invaders, terrorists, murderers. It makes them monsters. And when the humanity still left inside them sees the monster they have become, it decides that that monster has to die.
So no, parents shouldn’t proudly send their children off to become monsters. And no, we shouldn’t “thank” or cheer for people who commit violence for politicians. Nor should we pretend that what they are doing has anything to do with freedom. And even if the alternative is offending others, decent people who understand the truth should not remain silent while others continue to feed innocents to the war machine.
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(Larken Rose is a speaker, author and activist, having advocated the principles of non-aggression, self-ownership and a stateless, voluntary society for over twenty years. Donations to help support his articles, videos and other projects can be made by PayPal to "[email protected]" or by Bitcoin to 13xVLRidonzTHeJCUPZDaFH6dar3UTx5js.)